The * amn't gap

The view from West Yorkshire

Bibliographic Data

ID10140539
AuthorsJudith M Broadbent (University of Roehampton, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume45
Issue2
Pages251-284
Publication date2009-06-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-2267 • E-ISSN: 1469-7742
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022226709005696
OpenAlexW2038899812
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited29

The absence of I amn't for the first person singular present tense negative form is taken to indicate that there is a gap in the paradigm. Recent accounts take a morphosyntactic approach and phonology is largely ignored. Such accounts typically focus on contemporary forms of Standard English. This paper, in contrast, compares nineteenth-century and contemporary West Yorkshire (WY) aux+ n't forms and pursues a largely phonological solution. The paper sets out to demonstrate that WY has never had a * amn't gap and that changes over the past century shed light on the * amn't gap problem. Contemporary WY is known to exhibit a phenomenon called secondary contraction, whereby shouldn't [ʃʊd ʔ], for example, may be pronounced [ʃunʔ]. I argue that secondary contraction is responsible for the creation of homophones for amn't and aren't : [aːnt]/[aːt]. I will consider the possibility that certain aux+ n't forms have become lexicalised and that this has triggered secondary contraction as a phonological repair strategy. With the analysis of WY data as a backdrop, the paper then pursues the possibility that lexicalisation may have occurred, at a much earlier date, in precursors of Standard British English (SBE). Indeed, it seems plausible that homophony for amn't and aren't may have led to prescription against new realisations of amn't . The paper will show that grammatically amn't has evolved in exactly the same way as other aux n't forms, and it is only commentators who have treated it differently. If this is so, the * amn't gap in SBE is man-made rather than grammatical in nature

Contraction (grammar · Epistemology · Linguistics · Phenomenon · Phonology · Theology · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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